


Direwolf & Dragon

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [11]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Multiple Verses, Some will be rated high, others will be rated low
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:04:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3468650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets written for <a href="http://aryaxaegonweek.tumblr.com">arya x aegon week</a> on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hard Alee

He’s always liked sailing.  Ever since he was a little boy, he’s enjoyed the feeling of the waves rocking the boat beneath his feet.  Uncle Jon told him that when he’d been  _very_  little, it had been like a cradle, and he’d fallen asleep in his mother’s arms while Uncle Jon skippered the little white sailboat around the keys, talking with his father or letting Rhaenys hold the tiller.

Now though…now he’s on his own.  Completely and utterly.  His father had died years ago, as did Rhaenys, and his mother, and even Uncle Jon is gone now too.  Uncle Jon’s the worst.  He can’t remember his father, or his mother, or Rhaenys, but he  _feels_  Uncle Jon’s hand on his when he holds the mainsheet and feels the sail bulge away from him as he mans the two-man boat on his own.

The wind rushes hard against his face.  It dries his skin—or rather, dries what parts of his skin were not dried from the splashing salt of the water. His lips are chapped, his hair is windblown, and the blue he’d dyed it because he’d wanted to put a smile on Uncle Jon’s face as he’d been wasting away is fading.  It doesn’t match the sea anymore, but on clear days, it matches the sky.

He doesn’t like being alone.  The longer he sails on his own, even if he comes to shore at the end of a day, the more he realizes that he’d never been alone before now, even though it had felt like it when it had just been him and Uncle Jon on board. It had been easy to let the wind take him across the bay and forget that when he got home there would be photographs of smiling faces he’d never know, and Uncle Jon telling him how much they would love him wasn’t the same as recognizing their voices. 

Uncle Jon’s one of the smiling photographs.  A nurse had taken a photograph of them towards the end.  Uncle Jon’s beard and hair had fallen out, but his eyes were clear and happy as he’d ruffled his fingers through Aegon’s blue hair.

He’d told Aegon that last day that if ever he felt sad he should go sail.  He’d remember how to be happy on the water.  Sometimes he was right.  Sometimes, Aegon can let out a whoop or a laugh—especially on day when the wind is just right.  Other times though…on days when the wind is too high and he loses control all on his own, or when it’s practically doldrums, he wishes that Uncle Jon were there with him, and not even the boat they’d sailed together for years can take the edge off the pain.

He comes down to the dock one morning to set off and he finds a girl sitting there by his boat.  She’s a few years younger than him and has close-cropped dark hair and the sort of sad eyes that he’s too used to seeing in the mirror.  

"You need a second on your boat," she tells him as he hops onto the deck.  Her voice is glum and he looks up.

"I got it.  But thanks."

"You haven’t got it," she says.  "You capsized yesterday."

He hadn’t realized that she’d seen that.  The wind had been much too high, and there was too much weight and force in the sail and no matter how far back he’d leaned his weight alone couldn’t combat the weight of a full sail.  He hadn’t thought anyone had seen that. 

"Do you even know how to sail?" he asks her.  He doesn’t even know her name, but he can see what she’s offering.  No….not offering.  Asking.  She wants to be on the sea too.  She wants to feel the wind on her face, in her hair, the splash of water on her cheeks that might mask tears, the steady lapping of waves against the fiberglass coating of the hull.  

"I know enough.  And for the rest, I’m a quick study," she says uneasily.  He stares at her for a moment, and she stares back at him, clenching her jaw and crossing her arms over the ratty grey t-shirt.  It has sweat-stains at the armpits and around the neck, and is far too big for her.  "Besides—it’s hard to man a boat alone.  I’m not stupid—I know that much."

Some part of him wanted to shout at her that he  _wasn’t_  alone, but that was wrong.  He hadn’t been alone because Jon had been there, but now Jon’s gone and he’s got no one left.  He feels a dryness in his eyes that has nothing to do with the wind and when he glares at her, he sees her glaring back at him and a strange thought crosses his mind.   _Who has she lost?_

He doesn’t ask her that though.  Instead he jerks his head and she hops into the boat after him, and he passes her the mainsheet.  

They don’t say a word as he steers them out into the open water, and when the wind picks up and the sail puffs out, he prepares to tack.

"Ready about," he calls to her over the wind.  He doesn’t expect her to know, doesn’t expect her to say anything, but her voice calls back high and clear, "Hard alee!" and he pushes the tiller away from him.


	2. Warmth and Wildness

“She’s a wild thing.  Wild and beastly.  Like that direwolf of hers.” 

Aegon had heard it for years.  Years and years—Arya Stark was fearsome.  She was unladylike.  She was no fit consort for the Prince of Dragonstone.  His stepmother had spent what seemed like every breath since the announcement of their betrothal trying to convince his father not to wed him to the Stark girl.  But it was no use.

“I promised Elia her son would not wed his sisters, Cersei,” his father had said.  “I promised it as she lay dying.  I swore an oath.  I will not break that oath.”

“You broke your oath when you ran off with the Stark girl in the first place.”

“You will not mention that again.”

It had been the only time his father had looked fearsome.

Cersei Lannister had tried every tack she could find: “What about the Tyrell girl?  They say she is comely, and her father was loyal during the rebellion.”  “At _least_  consider the  _older_  Stark girl, she at least was dignified.” “If you would not have one of my daughters, Rhaegar, why not my nieces?  Janei is young, but she would make a fine queen.”  “And why not Princess Arianne?  They are close, if cousins.  She understands the burden of her title.”

But his father never once made to break his agreement with Lord Eddard, that when Lady Arya was old enough, she would wed Aegon. 

Aegon had not met Arya before.  His sister Rhaenys had, and his father and step-mother, but their journey north had been while Aegon was being fostered at Sunspear, and so he had not had that privilege.  He had been bitter at that.  Surely he should have been included, shouldn’t he?  He was his father’s heir, and yet his father always seemed to keep him at a distance and his stepmother was hardly warm to him.  And, of course, when the match had been made, Queen Cersei had returned from Winterfell he’d heard only ever heard her disavowals of Arya Stark, the girl with whom he would share the rest of his days.  And though Rhaenys had said that she was nice enough, Rhaenys had had little to say.  Rhaenys was so much older than her, after all, and had spent more time riding with Lord Stark’s heir Robb than she had with Arya. 

“She is a little wild,” Rhaenys had said.  “But not so much as stepmother would have you believe.”   She had paused, her brown eyes watching Aegon closely.  “That may also be her age.  She is younger than you, brother.”

She was younger than him. Six years younger than he was.  It had always seemed like the biggest difference in the world.  Though of course there was such an age difference between his father and his step-mother, but all the same—he had sisters Arya’s age—little Myrcella with her bright golden curls, and Joanna as well.

He wondered what a “little wild” meant.  Rhaenys had never elaborated, and he didn’t dare ask Cersei, for if he did, he was sure he wouldn’t get the truth.  But all the same, he did think of it.  Too often.  He’d heard of the wild North, where snows fell six or seven feet in a night, and the people grew hard and thin and harsh.  He had heard that there was a lady of the north who had married a bear and that bear had given her daughters.  He’d heard that, though flaying had been banned, there was definitely a room in Lord Bolton’s Dreadfort where he kept the skins of those who had died beneath the knife of his forbears, and he’d heard that on Skagos they  _ate_  people.  And, to be sure, Arya Stark was not a Skagg, or a Bolton, or a Mormont.  She was a daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn Tully, but all the same…

He knew he should not let his thoughts be that way.  Gods, he knew it well.  He had spent the time since his return from Dorne combating every mention of how the Dornish were spicy, hot-headed, slow-witted, and every other thing that the rest of the Kingdoms thought of them.  He knew better than to believe what he had heard about the North—about Arya Stark herself—especially if the words he heard had come from Queen Cersei’s mouth.

They rode north to meet Lord Eddard’s party as it made its way down the Kingsroad, two months after Arya’s seventeenth name day.  Aegon, his father, and four of the kingsguard, as well as a party of goldcloaks and his younger sister Myrcella, who had asked their father if she might ride with them.  A more silent group Aegon had never known.  In Dorne, his cousins had japed constantly with one another, but his father was stonily silent and Myrcella seemed hardly to know how to speak with him.  He had been away too long, it seemed.  His little sisters were all shy in his presence and only Rhaenys and Daenerys were ever any comfort to him, but they were both gone now—wed away from King’s Landing to strengthen his father’s ties with Riverrun and Highgarden.

It was as they approached Darry that they came upon some of Lord Eddard’s outriders and Aegon felt his stomach twist in nerves when he heard that Lord Eddard was less than a day’s ride away. “We shall wait for them here,” his father commanded, and Lord Darry smiled and bowed and led his father into the hall for refreshment.

“Ser Barristan,” Aegon said, turning to the white knight.  “I would ride north to the Trident.  To see where my father defeated Lord Robert the faithless.”  Ser Barristan smiled at him and inclined his head. 

“My Prince, I would be happy to escort you.”

They moved more quickly just the two of them than they had with his father.  His father was growing old, and his hips troubled him constantly, so their pace had been slow leaving King’s Landing, but with just Aegon and Ser Barristan, they raced towards the battlefield.  The sun was strong that day, and Ser Barristan had left his white cloak at Darry. As they rode, he would point to places they passed.  “That is where your father met with his war council.”  “Over there was where we captured some of Lord Robert’s outriders.” 

The river was vast, rippling blue and silver in the sunlight.  He’d heard it said that sometimes you could see glints of gold in the river from Robert’s golden armor.  Aegon saw no sign of it though.  He saw nothing at all, except a young woman crouched by the river, staring into the water as though she could see her future there.

She ignored them completely as they approached and it was only when Aegon called, “What are you looking for there?”

The girl turned to look at him.  She had a long face and deep grey eyes that were narrowed slightly.  He saw her reach for her waist, where, he noticed, she had a small sword sheathed.  It was on her right side.  Surely she must know that that wasn’t the right place to keep a sword.  It made it hard to draw.

“Peace,” he said gently, dismounting.  “You’ll know no harm from me.”  He held up his hands and she sat up a little straighter.

“I was looking for Robert’s gold,” she said.  “My father told me I might find some, and I wanted to see if I could.”

“You are out here alone, child?” Ser Barristan asked.

“I’m not a child,” she flared, and Aegon chuckled, for Rhaenys had told him long before that nothing made you sound quite so much like a child as protesting that you weren’t one. 

“Have you found any?” Aegon asked crouching down next to her and staring at the water.

“Not just yet,” she said and it was in that response that her face relaxed and she turned to face the water again.  “Father said I wouldn’t.  He said that the Trident would have been picked dry years ago, or that the gold flakes would have been carried out to the Narrow Sea.”

“My father said something similar,” Aegon confessed.  It wasn’t quite the truth, but it was near enough.

She smiled at him, and it seemed to take up so much of her face.  Her lips were a little chapped, he noticed, the way that Joanna’s often were because Joanna had the habit of chewing her lip when she was nervous. 

“Is this where it happened?” he asked Ser Barristan. 

“A little further down,” Ser Barristan responded, “At least, where I fought was.  The king faced Lord Robert right in the middle of the river.”  He gestured to the spot and the girl’s eyes followed his hand, going wide.  She looked solemn.  “Lord Robert bellowed for Lady Lyanna, but the king was too quick for him.  It was…unlike anything I have ever seen.”  Aegon tried to imagine his father at war, his father as a gallant knight but he could not. Gone were the days when Rhaegar Targaryen could win at a joust, or lead an army to victory.  He passed his days with the realm, or in his solar, reading books by men long dead, and left his son to training at arms.

“You fought at the battle of the Trident?” the girl asked.  Her voice was little more than a breath.

“I did,” Ser Barristan responded, modestly.  “I rode opposite Lord Umber’s men.  It was I who slew his brother’s sons.”  The girl frowned and looked down at her hands, but she said nothing.

“You were very brave,” Aegon said, looking up at Ser Barristan.  When he had been a boy, he had wanted to be Ser Barristan the Bold, and had lived for tales of the Trident, of Ser Barristan, Ser Jon, and Uncle Lewyn’s forces smashing the Baratheon host into the river.

“Only as brave as my king,” Ser Barristan said modestly.  “Lord Robert was ever impulsive.  A strong commander, ‘tis true, but he lacked the patience that Lord Eddard employed, and it was his downfall that day.”

“Lord Eddard wasn’t at the Trident,” the girl said quietly.  “He was elsewhere.”

“He sought out his sister in Dorne,” agreed Ser Barristan.  “Had he been at the Trident…well…it is best not to speculate what might have happened if the Battle had been different.”

The girl got to her feet and dusted off her knees as best she could.   There were splotches on the front of her dress from the mud of the river.  “I should go,” she said.  “My father will be wondering where I am.”

“Let us accompany you, at least,” said Aegon.  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

She smiled at him.  She was pretty when she smiled.  Aegon knew well he should not think of such thoughts—not when he was so close to meeting his own betrothed.  “I won’t be alone,” she said.  “I’ll be with Nymeria.”

For one wild moment, he thought she meant his cousin, Lady Nym, who was far away to the south.  But a moment later, the horses reared and if Ser Barristan had not held their reins they might have bolted.  Aegon leapt to his aid, doing all he could to calm his mount.  Meraxes was a brave horse, and calm.  He did not spook easily at all, and yet the horse’s eyes were rolling in terror. 

“What has gotten into you?” Aegon demanded of the horse, as if half-expecting him to respond.

“They do that, sometimes,” the girl said, and Aegon looked over his shoulder and let out an undignified shout.  A great grey wolf was standing beside the girl, watching him closely with bared fangs.  The wolf was easily the size of a horse, but the girl wasn’t scared at all.  She was resting her hand in the fur of the wolf’s neck.  And he heard Queen Cersei’s voice in his ears.   _She’s a wild thing.  Wild and beastly.  Like that direwolf of hers._

“You’re Arya Stark,” he said dumbly, and the girl—Arya—shrugged.

“I am, my prince.”  He gaped at her, and her lips curved upwards again in a faint smile.  “You did not expect me?”

“I—I thought not to find you  _here_ , I suppose.”  He felt the fool.  Why shouldn’t she be here?  He had come, hadn’t he?  And if she was unladylike…he flushed.  She certainly seemed unladylike, with the great stains on the knees of her dress.  Rhaenys, at least, would have swept her skirts out around her to keep them clean. 

Arya sighed.  “Most would not expect to.”  She sounded unconcerned, but he thought he caught a hint of bitterness to her voice.  “It is unfitting for me to be off on my own, as my septa is always reminding me.”

“Why do you go then?” he asked.  She had begun to walk and he was tugging at Meraxes’ reins, trying to make the horse follow the direwolf.  He didn’t seem to believe that being close to the beast was safe and was remaining stubbornly still.  Arya turned her head over her shoulder and he saw another smile wash across her face.  She crossed to the horse and pet his nose, making a cooing noise.

“I promise Nymeria won’t eat you,” she murmured to the horse.  She held her sleeve to his nose.  “See?  She hasn’t eaten me yet.”   The horse looked at Arya, then at the direwolf, then took a step forward as though he thought it was a very bad idea.  Aegon laughed.

Arya looked at him.

“If horses were humans, I’m fairly certain he’d be cursing me right now.”

“Well, he knows you better than me, so I imagine he has his reasons.”  That only made Aegon laugh harder.

“You have no idea.”

The wolf walked ahead of them, sniffing at trees, pausing to flick her ears back to their conversation, forward to some unknown something that had caught her attention, or even just turning to look at Arya over her shoulder.  She was an attentive guard, and Aegon was sure that she would have allowed no harm to befall Arya. But he did not part with her. 

He found he liked her.  There was something easy about her, something warm.  She was quick to smile and laugh, and the stories she told of her family, of her home made him wish that he could ride all the way north to see Winterfell himself one day. Her older brother Robb was wed now, and his wife was expecting their first child, and Arya’s sister Sansa had been wed the year previously to a Mallister of Seagard.   “My brother Bran will be coming to court,” she was saying.  “He was fostered at Riverrun with my mother’s brother and will be knighted soon, I am sure.”  He could hear in her voice how she longed to see this brother again.  He remembered being parted from Rhaenys, and it made him that much more fond of the idea of Bran joining Arya at court, for he remembered the elation he’d felt seeing his older sister again for the first time in years.

It was, he realized suddenly, as though she was welcoming him into her world, into her life as easily as if he were a friend she had known for years, rather than the betrothed she had just met while crouched in the mud.  It was an even greater shock to realize that no one in his life had ever spoken to him so quickly with such openness—not even those who were tied to him by blood.  Quentyn had been awkward, Arianne had been teasing, and his cousins the Sand Snakes were always in and out and about their own business but they’d never made him a part of it quite so easily as Arya Stark.

He found himself listening to the contours of her sentences, stories of reading to her little brother Rickon at night, or listening to her father’s conversations with his men at dinner, and marveling.  This was not what he’d been led to expect at all, but he found that he didn’t care at all, for no words could have described her laugh, and the look in her eyes when she made him laugh too.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is a follow up to this one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated M/E.

I was like something stupid out of a song.  Not the ones that King Rhaegar sang, of doom and sadness and loss, but the ones that Sansa had always loved and sung to herself while she’d sat sewing by the window and staring across the moors.  The sort with gallant princes who seemed to fall in love with fair maidens.

It wasn’t quite like that, of course.  Arya wasn’t stupid.  She knew that she was no fair maid, and even thought that Aegon might know that too.  He certainly didn’t seem to mind when she had emerged from her bedchamber the day after meeting him by the Trident wearing breeches and boots and leathers.  He had looked surprised that she hadn’t taken his hand to pull herself onto her horse, but when they’d ridden…

Nymeria liked him.  Meraxes did not like Nymeria, but Meraxes tolerated Nymeria, which was all that Arya could really expect of any horse.

He told her stories of Dorne, of his cousins who fought with blades and whips and bows, of the one—and she mustn’t tell a  _soul_ —who had snuck into the citadel disguised as a boy and who was one link away from forging her chain in its entirety.

He liked to ride fast, and had been so excited at the prospect of racing her ahead of the column, letting Meraxes show his speed while Arya’s Alysanne thundered along next to him.  Arya had always been good on a horse, but Aegon was almost her match.  That pleased her.

He did please her, she had realized as her lord father’s column had made its way further and further south.  He was quick to laugh, and easy to talk to and he always seemed to be listening to her, even when she was muttering under her breath.  She’d never known anyone so attentive in her life, and…it was like a song.

A week after their arrival in King’s Landing, they were wed in the great sept of Baelor to the cheers of the commons, and when they rode back to Aegon’s High Hill, Arya stared around the city that she’d barely seen while riding in with her father, at the faces of the people who’d come out to see her. She wondered if they saw a stranger, or if they saw a lady, even.  She certainly felt a lady, in the cloth-of-silver dress her mother had had made for her—made for her because her needlework was as abysmal as it had been when she was nine.  Bran had said she looked pretty, and her father had kissed her forehead and told her that pretty was a word for flowers and that Arya was beautiful.  And looking in the mirror, she very nearly believed it.  If it weren’t for her long, horsey face, she certainly might.

They certainly seemed to like her—the commons who cheered for her, “Lady Arya!” or sometimes even “Princess Arya!” She knew that her mother had had bread distributed to the people of the city in her name.  Arya hoped that it had reached everyone who truly needed it, for her father had always told her that sometimes a kindness from a lord or lady might not reach those who needed it most.

And riding at her side was Aegon, a crown on his head, a smile on his face as he would lean over to point out to her different parts of the city as they passed through its heart.  Once she even caught him looking at her breast as he did so, his sparkling purple eyes darting down to the neckline of her gown.  Arya felt herself grow warm, the way she had when she’d caught herself looking at the muscular curve of his rear when he’d been mounting or dismounting Meraxes when they’d been on the Kingsroad.

Aegon, who was quick to laugh, and easy to talk to, and who was looking at her differently now—differently in a way that she liked but which also made her nervous.

And all through dinner, made her laugh.  He told her stories of his little sisters and their fear of the court fool, of how when he’d been younger he’d tried to steal his father’s harp for he’d been convinced it had some sort of magical property that made everyone fall in love with them when the king had played it, of the time he and Rhaenys had stolen six honeyed tarts from the kitchens  _each_ and eaten them all and been violently ill.  And through all these stories, as she hooted with laughter until she was gasping for air, she would notice how his eyes would drift down to her breasts, how when she put pieces of lemon cake between is lips, he would suck on her fingers until she blushed, because the look in his eyes was so devious that she was sure that Septa Mordane would have shrieked at how improper it was.

 _We’re married now, though_ , Arya thought while she let him feed her pieces of cake as well.   _It’s not improper if you’re married._ She’d never been wholly sure that it was improper, even if you  _were_  married.  A part of her had always wondered if Septa Mordane hadn’t just said all that to try and turn her into someone she wasn’t.

 _Is this what I am though?_ She thought as Aegon reached over to adjust a lock of her hair that had fallen loose of her moonstone hairnet.   _Take me south and suddenly I am moonstone hairnets and cloth-of-silver?_ She didn’t like that.  She didn’t like that at all.

But she did like Aegon, and the way that his touch made her insides quiver and above all the way he seemed to notice her discomfort—he truly did, she could tell from the way he watched her between his stories.   _He wants me to laugh and be happy.  He doesn’t want me to be sad_.  It almost made her sadder to think it, that she couldn’t somehow just let herself be happy now.   _Aegon didn’t mind you in breeches and leathers.  Surely that won’t have changed, will it?_

 _He’ll like you best naked.  That’s what all men like best_ , she heard in the voice of Theon Greyjoy, and she almost scowled, but caught herself, because she didn’t want Aegon to think she was scowling at him.  Not when…

“My lords and ladies.”  For one so slender and frail looking, Princess Rhaenys’ voice certainly carried through the vast hall.  “I think it’s time my brother makes a man of himself, don’t you?”

And any apprehension Arya had had about what she was evaporated when half the men at court were bearing down upon her, intent on ripping her mother’s lovely cloth-of-silver gown from her while they carried her off to bed.

They were all laughing when they left Arya and Aegon alone together, wearing nothing at all, and considering that he’d spent half the evening staring at her breasts, he couldn’t seem to look at them now without flushing.  She couldn’t quite blame him for that, though, not when the sight of him…there wasn’t anywhere to look. There was his face, but he was blushing and avoiding her gaze, and she could look at his chest but if she looked at his chest it was hard not to follow that pale trail of hair down to his…

She wanted to cross her arms over her chest, or tuck her legs up to her knees so he couldn’t see anything at all, but she didn’t think that would solve the problem, so she just sat there on top of the bed, breathing deeply and trying not to…not to…

Not to what?  To blush?  To giggle at the ridiculousness of it all? To feel ashamed?

“Have you ever seen a naked woman before?” she asked him and his blush deepened.  He was staring at her knees now.

“I have,” he said carefully.  “I’ve…yes.”

She did not want to ask the other question that sprang to her mind—she did not want to know the answer to that.  So she scooted over on the bed so that she was closer to him, so that she could feel the heat of his chest on hers, even if they weren’t touching.

He locked eyes with her and his hand brushed along her side, sending a shiver across her skin, and Arya chewed on her lip.

Aegon groaned.

“What?” she asked, flushing.

“When you chew on your lip, you make  _me_  want to chew on your lip.”

“What do you—”

And he was kissing her again—not the chaste kiss they’d shared in the sept, or the kisses they’d shared over toasts at the feast, kissing her the way she’d seen Robb kiss Meera when he’d thought no one was watching, his hands fisting in her hair, sucking her lower lip in between his teeth.  And Arya’s heart was pumping in her chest as hard as it had when she had used to race Bran through the godswood when she was younger—harder, even.  Harder than it had ever pumped in her life, and every time that Aegon’s tongue swept across her lips she felt it surge even more.

She pulled him closer to her, feeling the light dusting of the hair on his chest against her breasts and his hands were splayed across her spine, holding her close to him too, and Arya smiled into his kisses because she could feel his heart pounding violently against her chest as well.

He was very warm, she realized.  Warmer than she would have thought, but then again, she didn’t know what she would have thought.  And she let her hands trail over his back, over his sides, running them up and down because just the feeling of his skin beneath her finger tips was wonderful because…because…

Because he was hers.  He was hers, and he was moaning into her lips, and whispering to her that she was beautiful, that she was perfect, that he was blessed in having her, and she knew that he meant it.  And she reached up to cup his face between her hands, and paused in her kissing to look at him, straight in the eyes. His cheeks were flushed and there was more black to purple in his eyes and his lips were wet from kissing her and he’d never looked quite so handsome as he did now, and he’d always been handsome.

“Are you happy?” he whispered to her, reaching out and running his hands through her hair.

She nodded, but a shadow of doubt flickered across his face.

“You aren’t pretending to make me happy, or keep…” She silenced him with a kiss.

“I was nervous earlier.  I’m not now,” she told him.  “I am happy.  I promise.”

“You sure?”

“I’m not a liar, stupid,” she said, poking him in the stomach.  He let out a burst of laughter.

“Well, that’s lucky, because lying’s stupid and I would hate to have a stupid wife.” He poked her right back.

“Well, I hope I don’t have a stupid husband.”  She poked him again and he grabbed her wrists and kissed them, kissed her all the way up her arm until he was sucking at her neck and his hands drifted up to cup her breasts and Arya sighed and arched into him and he grinned into her lips and one hand dropped down to her stomach, tracing circles lower and lower and lower until he was running his fingers through the hair at the juncture of her thighs and—

She gasped.  That was new.  Not wholly new—she’d touched herself there before, in moments of curiosity but her own fingers never felt like  _that_  when she’d run them over herself, not so sturdy, or callused.

But she didn’t have time to think about it.  Aegon was shifting her onto her back, his lips still at her neck, kneeing her legs apart and fumbling for a moment then she winced as he pushed inside her with a groan.   _That_  felt even weirder, but she wouldn’t tell him that now.  She might later—she wouldn’t want to lie—and as he kissed her and began rocking his hips back and forth, she found that it felt less weird and more nice as his breathing grew more staggered.  It was unlike anything she’d ever felt before, having him inside her like this, having his breath in her ear, his heart against her chest thumping like a drum as she reached her arms around him and held him close because she couldn’t think what else to do.  Was she supposed to do something else?  Surely she was, but she wasn’t sure what beyond vague memories of hearing Theon talk about tongues but her tongue wasn’t anywhere near him, and his lips weren’t on hers at all, so she couldn’t even run it over his lips as he’d run his over hers.

She barely had time to marvel at how odd a thought that was when he was crying, and she felt warm wetness inside her and Aegon was collapsing on top of her and murmuring her name into her skin.

They lay together for a little while, Aegon still inside her, even though he had rolled over so that he was not completely on top of her.  

"Can we go riding tomorrow?" she asked him, and he laughed and nudged her with his hip.  "Don’t be stupid," she muttered, and he kissed her.

"We can ride every day if you like.  Every day from now until we’re old and grey."

"That would wear out Meraxes," Arya teased.

"Well, I did say if  _you_  liked, so you’d be the one who had to live with that responsibility.”

"Oh shut up," and she kissed him, tracing his lips with her tongue.


	4. The Tale of the Wolf Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's update can be found at chapter 3, since it's a sequel of sorts to chapter 2.

There once was a prince.  He was everything a prince should be, kind, considerate, handsome.  He lived in a big red castle and spent his days attending his father’s court and tending to his sickly mother, and singing with his sister and his aunt, a maiden who was younger than he.  He charming and kind and witty and very much beloved by his family.

One day, a dragon swooped from the sky.  It was fierce and red and when it breathed, fire spat from its nostrils and mouth.  It burned the city around the castle, burned the forest on the other side of the river, and the sky was black with soot.  

Some say that it was jealous of the gold in the castle’s vaults.  Others perpetuate the lie that dragons seek to carry off princesses, and the king had two—his daughter and his sister.  Why the dragon came, none can say.  The only thing that anyone knows is that the young prince went to fight it, and when he raised his sword, the dragon knocked it from his hand and carried him off to the mountains in the east.

The queen was distraught.  This boy her pride and joy, and she had nearly died giving him birth.  She turned to her husband and demanded, “You must rescue him—you must rescue our son.”

But the king was a cautious man.  He was cautious and he knew that if he died, there would be none save his brother to take his seat, and the king’s  brother was not sound of mind.  So instead of riding out after the dragon, the king declared that his vassals should do so in his stead, and the one who would slay the dragon and save the prince would win his daughter’s hand in marriage.  

The queen was not pleased by this.  She did not wish to sell her daughter in exchange for her son, but when she begged him to change his terms, the king would not listen.  

One by one, the king’s vassals sent their sons after the dragons.  First went the young lion knight, with hair of gold and a wispy mustache.  But he was barely past the age of manhood, and when he faced the dragon, with a flick of its tail he was knocked off the side of the mountain.  He landed in a hedgerow and no one knows how he survived, but he did.  Next came the knight of flowers, a youngest son thirsting for glory.  He was a proven knight, who sat a horse well, and whose skill with a lance was unparalleled.  But when he charged the dragon, he was burned in his armor, and his wounds were so grievous that none knew if he would live or die.  His closest friend, the lord of stags was so enraged at his friend’s peril that, regardless of his own distaste for the king’s family, he raised a great host to kill the dragon, only to be crushed as the dragon threw boulders down the mountain.

One by one, the king’s vassals rode; one by one they failed.  Every lord went, or sent his son—all save one.  The wolf lord to the north remained silent in his home, though he had sons whom he could have easily sent.  The wolf lord hated the king, for the king’s father had slaughtered his father, and brother, and the king had abducted his sister.  He had no desire to serve the king, so he kept to his lair, and ignored all news of the south, and bade his sons to close their ears to tales that might inspire them to take on the dragon.

His sons closed their ears, and obeyed their father.  But the wolf lord had a daughter who did not.  She was his youngest daughter, called a troublemaker by her mother.  She had no fondness for sewing as was expected of a lady of her station.  She liked to ride, she liked to hunt, she liked to sneak a practice sword from the armory and make her brothers teach her to fight.  But most of all, she dreamed of adventure.  She dreamed of having a song sung of her, like the great warrior maids of old.  

"I want to fight the dragon," she told her eldest brother one night before bed.  He shook his head.  "You must do as father says," he said.

"I want to fight the dragon," she told her younger brother.  "It is dangerous.  I would not see you hurt," he said.

"I want to fight the dragon," she told her youngest brother.  "You are a girl.  It is not for you," he said.

She turned to her last brother, her half-brother, her father’s bastard, and said, “I want to fight the dragon,” and he sighed, for he knew she would not be dissuaded.  He rubbed her hair and said, “Little sister, please do not die. I will be angry with you if you do.”   Her bastard brother snuck her a sword—a real sword of castle-forged steel—and in the middle of the night, she rode off into the night.

For a month and a day, the wolf girl rode.  She rode until she knew she was in the south, for there were no snows anymore, and then she turned east towards the mountains.  

When she reached the mountain, she paused.  There was no dragon to be seen, though everyone she’d passed along the way told her that the dragon’s lair was atop the mountain.  But just because she could not see it did not mean that it was safe.  The wolf girl knew this.  She was not stupid.

That night, when she slept at the base of the mountain, she listened to the sky and heard the sound of great wings overhead and, if she strained her ears, the sound of a song.   It was a nice song, though she could only hear snatches of it on the wind, sung in a voice that was as smooth as honey.  The wolf girl had never heard a song like that before.

A wolf howled nearby, its voice bouncing off the stone of the mountains, cutting through the night air and up atop the mountain, the sound of song stopped.  And she had a plan.

For a month and a day, the wolf girl stayed at the base of the mountain.  She saw other knights ride to the mountain, saw them fail, and every night, she heard the sound of the prince’s song.  And every day, she ran with wolves.  

There was a little wolf pack that ran through the valley at the base of the mountain.  An alpha, his queen, and their pups.  They were bigger than any wolf should be, and the girl befriended them happily.  She’d always had a way of making friends, and the wolves’ were not so different from men, if you knew the trick of it, and she knew the trick of it as if there was some sort of magic in her blood.

A month and a day, she watched, observed, for the girl was a clever girl and knew how to learn the patterns of things.  She watched and saw that the dragon took to the skies during the day, and roosted at night.  It was during the day that she could hear the prince’s song, and during the night that she watched other knights try, and fail, to rescue him.  She wondered why it was that he didn’t just run away during the day, or while the dragon slept and knew that it must be for good reason.  

One day she climbed the mountain with the great she-wolf at her side.  The she-wolf was her favorite—fiercely protective of her litter and ferocious besides.  There was a stubbornness too her as well and a playfulness too.  And, of all of them, she liked the wolf girl best as well.  They climbed together, side by side, leaving at dawn before the dragon had awoken and only halfway up the mountain when it took flight.  It was midday, the sun high in the sky, before they reached the summit and when they did, the wolf girl saw why it was that the prince had not been able to run away.

Both of his legs were broken—broken and mangled, swollen and covered in scabbed pus, and their skin was colored purple, yellow, blue, and black.  There was an ashen quality to his face and skin, and he looked fevered, and the wolf girl wondered how long he could possibly have had them broken like that, for surely if they were infected, he would have died.

"You must run," the prince told her, his voice raspy and so unlike the pure clear tenor she’d heard so often.  "The dragon will kill you and eat you if you—"

"Don’t be stupid.  I’ve come to rescue you," the wolf girl responded.  

"No—you mustn’t!" he protested, but it was a feeble protest at best.  

The wolf girl crouched down next to him.  ”How long have your legs been broken?” she asked him gently as the she-wolf padded near him.  

The prince frowned.  ”I…I don’t…” he shook his head.  ”The dragon.  I think…I don’t know.”  His eyes were dark—not in color, though the wolf girl had never seen eyes like his, a purple not unlike the bruises on his broken legs—but dark in a different way.  

She reached out and clasped his shoulder.  ”It will be all right,” she murmured gently, as she would have to one of her younger brothers.  The prince looked up at her and his eyes were bright with tears.

"I don’t want to die here," he told her desperately.

"And you won’t," she said forcefully.

"You won’t be able to carry me," he said sadly.  "You’re too little."

"I’ve a horse at the base of the mountain.  And you can ride the wolf down," the wolf girl said.  The prince looked at her skeptically but said nothing.  The wolf girl rolled her eyes at him, and without preamble, picked him up as she would her younger brother who had lost the use of his legs in a fall that should have killed him.  The prince yelped in surprise, then laughed and tugged himself onto the wolf’s back.

"We must hurry," said the wolf girl, and she led the wolf down the mountain, hiding under trees.  They paused here and there, and the wolf girl rubbed pine sap on them to cover their scent as best she could.  

"Why did the dragon want you?" she asked the prince when they were halfway down the mountain.  He was feverish, as though being away from the dragon made him suddenly more ill than he’d been before.  It scared the wolf girl, but she said nothing.  She had learned long before that fear cut deeper than swords, and if she let herself be afraid for him, she wouldn’t be able to keep a clear head, and they were not out of danger just yet.

"Dragons like song," the prince said.  His voice was uneven, his words a hint slurred, and the wolf girl was frightened.  She began to move faster, knowing the she-wolf would keep pace with her easily.

"You sing very prettily," she said to him.

"My father says I have his voice.  I never heard him sing though," the prince said.  He sounded proud.  He sounded tired.  "Do you sing?"

The wolf girl frowned.  Her sister loved songs, and sang very prettily as well, but she had never sung much.  Her voice was low and rough and didn’t sound good at all.  But she liked to listen well enough.  ”Not often,” she said.

"I should like to hear you sing," said the prince.

"That is your delirium speaking, my prince," she teased lightly.

He opened his mouth to respond, but a roar echoed through the mountains and the wolf girl whirled around and stared up at the mountain. The dragon had returned, and found the prince gone.  

"Oh no," the prince moaned.  "Oh no, it will hunt us and burn us now.  We should hide in the woods."  But the wolf girl shook her head.

"It will burn all the trees if it thinks we’re there," she said.  She turned and tugged the prince off the wolf and set him on the ground.  He was shaking and sweating and she knew that they would need to find someplace to tend his hurts and soon, or he would die of a fever.  Perhaps the dragon had some sort of magic that kept the illness at bay.  It was not a comforting thought.  She sat down next to him and looked at the she-wolf and, as if by magic, the she-wolf came and sat down next to them, in front of them, practically on top of them, so that they were not visible between the grey fur and the grey rock face.  

"Clever," the prince said.  "You are clever.  The others who came weren’t clever.  But you are."

"Yes, yes.  Hush now," she hissed at him.

The dragon searched high and low, soaring and roaring through the mountains, but no matter where the dragon looked, it found no sign of them as they sat there with the she-wolf.

The prince fell into a deeper delirium, and when he settled to sleep, the wolf girl had to climb up onto the back of the she-wolf with him to make sure he didn’t fall off.  The way was slower now, for the she-wolf had a greater weight on her back, but they reached the wolf girl’s horse before the moon was too high in the sky.

The wolf girl thanked the she-wolf, hugged her tight, for she had been a good and brave friend.  The wolf girl would miss her.

They rode for a day and a night before the prince was too weak to continue, and they stopped in a small town by the sea.  The wolf girl paid for a room in an inn, and set him to bed before hurrying out and finding someone—anyone—who knew anything about healing, who could set the bones in his legs and stop the fever.

For a week and a half they stayed in the little town, a week and a half during which the prince’s fever tore through his body and his legs pained him even through his fever dreams.  The healer that the wolf girl had found had had to re-break the prince’s legs, and cast them in plaster that went all the way up to his hips.  It would be hard for him to sit on the back of her horse, but that was not her concern.  The wolf girl’s only concern was the prince’s health.  She poured soup down his throat every day, and honeyed water as well.  She gave him milk of the poppy, and changed the sweaty linens on his bed and refused to let him die. She even sang to him one night, sang to him, though her voice was low and rough and though the notes came out all wrong.  It seemed to soothe him.

His fever broke, and when he stared at her with eyes tired and clear, there was wonder in his face.  ”You saved my life,” he said.  ”You saved me from a dragon, you saved me from my own body.  You…” and it was as though he could both see her and couldn’t see her at all.  ”You’re only a little girl.”

"I’m not," she retorted.  "I am ten-and-seven.  I’m hardly a little girl."  

The prince smiled and it was a gentle smile.  ”I only meant that you succeeded where knights had failed.”

When the prince was strong enough, they set out again, riding slowly to the king’s castle.  By the time they were on the road, they heard many stories: the dragon had burned the city—no—the dragon had gone to the king and wept and begged for a song—no—the princess, the king’s younger sister, had subdued the dragon with a whip and ridden it off into the sky—no—the dragon was dead, slain by the king himself.  What was true and what wasn’t, neither the wolf girl nor the prince could tell, but one thing every story did agree on was that no one knew what had befallen the prince.

They arrived in the king’s castle nearly a month after the wolf girl had rescued the prince and the joy at his return was so great that there was nearly a week full of festivities.  The wolf girl was heralded as a hero, and the king had a suit of armor made for her, and told her that the crown was in her debt, and that no favor was too great.

But the wolf girl wanted no favors from the king.  She only wished to go home.  And at the end of the tourneys and balls and revelry, she mounted her horse and prepared to ride north.

"I wish you would stay," the prince said before she left.  "I…" and he blushed.

The wolf girl smiled down at him, and put a hand on his shoulder.  ”Well, if you miss me, when your legs are better you should ride north and come find me.”

The prince’s eyes were full of questions, but the wolf girl only smiled.  And when she kicked her horse forward, she knew that he would come for her one day, and, until he did, she had plenty of time to decide what she truly wanted.


	5. Inspiration

He has written nearly a thousand songs at this point.  He’s written them easily, and quickly, and beautifully.  People tell him that his songs are like his father’s—heart-wrenching and doing things with minor thirds that should sound like old hat but which somehow sound like he invented them.  

But his inspiration is…well, it’s gone.  Aegon has never felt less inspired in his life.  Not even when he was writing Rhaenys a birthday song to put on youtube and couldn’t think of a rhyme for the word “kitten.” (“Smitten” was weird to put in a song about your sister.  ”Fitten” made no sense and wasn’t even a word, unless he was a cowboy.  And “Sittin’” didn’t make sense at the end of a line.)

But he can’t write Arya one single song.  He doesn’t know why.  He should be able to.  He’s written tons of songs for ex-girlfriends—songs about his undying love which are both catchy and sweet and which made triple platinum before he’d even realized that triple platinum wasn’t something that most people got once, much less four times.  But Arya…

Arya’s not his girlfriend.  It shouldn’t be a thought that makes his stomach sink. But it is.  She’s not.  She never has been.  As far as he can tell, she’s never been remotely interested in him, even.  And if Arya hadn’t trained him not to use the phrase “Friend Zone” (“Honestly, it’s  _such a sexist thing.  No is a complete sentence._ Also, what’s wrong with being friends, anyway?”) he would term it that way, because sometimes when she’s laughing, or telling him that he looked stupid during his live performance the night before, all he wants to do is kiss her.  He likes being her friend—he really does.  But sometimes, it feels like he doesn’t even exist.  

 _If I wrote her a song though_ …

It’s perpetually on his mind, ever since he helped her move into her new apartment and she’d stripped off her t-shirt after lugging the couch upstairs “because honestly, what’s the different between a sports bra and a swimsuit?  You’ve seen me in a bikini and that was a lot more revealing than this, so you can get that scandalized look off your face Aegon Targaryen.”  And, because he wanted to….he’s got nothing.  Nothing in the world.

Because how do you write a song about Arya Stark?  How do you write something that will win her love without making her roll her eyes for about five years and call you stupid?  How do you make her look at you with big grey eyes and that look of surprise that comes whenever someone tells her how pretty she looks? And he  _can’t_  write about how she actually looks because if he gets to thinking too hard about her body he ends up…distracting himself.

He’s completely forgotten everything he ever knew about music.  Did he ever know anything about music?  He can’t remember.  The other songs he’d written all seem bland now.  Triple Platinum?  They were all hardly better than the “Funky Chicken Dance.”

How to write a song about Arya Stark?  Nothing simple and easy.  Nothing quick and catchy.  No four-chord song for her.  

Arya is…Arya is…Arya is…

Arya is everything music should be, notes moving independently from one another but somehow moving perfectly as a team, as a pack.  Arya is a whole pack of wolves wrapped up into one body.

And Aegon smiles, and grabs his guitar, and begins.


	6. Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is v much NSFW.

"Hold still," he told her and she hissed when the wax hit the skin on her breast.  It felt good.   _Really_  good, actually, once she got past the sting of it.  ”Good?” he asked her and she nodded.

He grinned and tilted the candle again and Arya gasped as more wax dribbled across her skin and hardened, and Aegon ran his fingers along it, poking some of the softer wax and watching it mold to his fingertips.  Then he gave her a wicked grin and took the candle back up and dribbled more wax onto her flesh.

She moaned and arched up and clutched at the blanket beneath her.  She’d heard that Targaryens had a thing about fire, but she’d never thought that _this_  was what they meant.  But Aegon always took her by surprised—except when he was wholly predictable, and the bulge in his jeans was wholly predictable.

"Fuck you look hot like this," he breathed.  "You look like I’ve jizzed all over your tits."  Arya rolled her eyes at him.

"I’m pretty sure that if you’d jizzed all over my tits, you wouldn’t be hard anymore."

"How do you know?" He blew out the candle with a smirk.  "I get it up again pretty quickly."

"I’m aware," said Arya dryly.  "But this much jizz?"

He was running his hands along the side of her breasts and nothing had ever felt softer—nothing.  He traced the edges of the wax and peeled some of it away so that he could pinch at her nipples and Arya felt her cunt clench.  Her breasts were ordinarily sensitive but this—” _Fuck_ ,” she hissed and Aegon smirked at her.  

"Now what were you saying about this being a stupid idea?" he teased, pinching her again, then letting his whole hand cup at her breast.  "What were you saying about how this was me having some sort of genetic pyrophilia?"

” _Aegon_ ,” she growled at him, and he just laughed.

"Want something?"

"Fuck you."

"Would you like to?"

She rolled her eyes at him and he grinned and slid down the bed so that he was kneeling between her legs.  Arya sat up and felt some of the wax cracking on her chest.  Aegon hooked two fingers inside her underpants and slid them down her legs, then ran fingers along her slit, watching her closely.  His fingers were light on her—too light, and it wasn’t really until he was  _there_  and yet not that she realized just how much she was aching.  She had been so focused on her chest, on the heat and sting and sensitivity of her breasts and now… She raised an eyebrow at him.

"I’m just thinking," he shrugged.

"About what?"

"My jizz on your chest."  He winked.  She rolled her eyes.  "How I want to fuck you.  There are plenty of options and—"

"Quit being a tease and just get on with it, will you?" she barked at him.  

"Fine then," he said and he took one of her knees and hoisted it over his shoulder, and then the other.  He fiddled with the zipper of his jeans and his cock sprang loose and a moment later Arya groaned because he was sheathed inside her.  

She loved it, loved him inside her.  She loved the smooth way he slid in and out of her, smooth and warm and wet because  _fuck_  she was wet.  His thumb was on her clit, rubbing it gently in time with his thrusts, and Arya gasped every time he pushed into her because there was something so fantastic about them like this. 

She loved how his cocksure smirk faded when he was inside her, the way that his eyes went dark and his face went slack and even if he was the one who had been dripping wax on her and teasing her, he was losing control when he was in her, losing himself in the feel of her, warm around him.  But she couldn’t revel in triumph for that—not truly, not when her stomach was trembling and air was coming in short gasps even when she tried to steady her breath and that thumb on her clit was relentless and she was convulsing around him, gasping his name and other curses as an orgasm burned its way through her from his hands to her heart. 

She lay there watching him for a moment or two, reaching her hands down to toy with the springy pale curls above his cock, relishing the feel of him falling apart inside her as a hot flush crept up his chest to his cheeks.  And when he was done, he bent forward and took her other nipple in his mouth and cracked the wax off with his teeth.

"That’s such a stupid plan, you’re just chewing wax now," she teased him, running her fingers through his hair.  

"True," he said, but he kept nipping at her, as he lowered his weight onto her.  "True, but I don’t much care."

"Well…" she murmured, bending down and kissing the top of his head, "That’s on you then, isn’t it?" 

He kept nipping, and she lay there, feeling her heart bound its way back to normal, feeling her skin burn beneath him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Thanks for reading and happy shipping :)


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